Who Am I?

It is raining and cold on this Saturday afternoon.  Enjoying the stillness and only the sound of the rain I’m wandering through my journals from 2017.  This practice always reveals writings, wanderings, wonderings, questions I have forgotten I have spent time writing onto the page of my journal.

My birthday is in early January so not only is the calendar year coming to a close but a new year starts for me just a few days after the 31st of December.  My journal prompt on the 7th of June, the midpoint of the year, was, simply the word “who”.  I did “give” it a question mark so I suspect I had somewhat of an idea of where my wanderings, wonderings, and questions might lead.

So, here goes….

Who am I?  Who shaped me….parents, grandparents, neighbors, friends…..

Who knew me?  Who took me under a wing?  Influenced me?  So many helped raise me.  Yes, it takes, it took a village.

Who is my village?  Some I will never know.

How can anyone say they are cut out of just a piece of cloth, instead of claiming the rich and varied tapestry of the being they are?

Some of my siblings have been doing some family ancestry lately.  Some unknown “who’s”, a few threads so surprising none of us are sure how it weaves in.

There is an adoption.  There is  a strand of Jewish roots.  We are still not sure where they entwined themselves into our family tree.  So, again, I ask…

Who am I?  It seems the older I get the more there is to know about myself.  There are more layers, threads, strands of me, not tangled but placed into the pattern that only reveals itself in the ongoing weaving.

I am in this weaving, being woven through the years, my essence, my self, the deepest sense of me, being revealed in the mirror of ancestors, of my her/story,  pieces known,unknown, revealed, still being formed.

I find this both comforting and exciting as I close in on my 66th birthday in a few weeks. As they say, “More will be revealed.”